Not sure what I'll do if one of the plastic pumpkin decorations gets blown down the street.

I suppose I could take precautions but what chance does anyone have against the 340th Storm of the Century (from this century).

I do hope that somewhere out there on the ocean some dumb fucking swordfishermen are trying to decide whether to seek safety with plenty of time to do so or to make a more northern run for the big fish.

Christ- Stupidity will kill 98% of those who die in storm-related ways.

The situation is pretty serious. Not often that you get a Category 2 hurricane merge with the first strong cold front of the season (when this past front was over Oklahoma, it dropped temperatures 40 degrees. This cold airmass led to the first snows over Oregon through Colorado as well).

What's interesting for us weather types is that this specific storm is moving from a barotropic system to a baroclinic one- essentially doing a warm-core (tropical) transition to the cold-core (extratropical), while still over the Gulf Stream, and intensifying at the same time. When Sandy makes landfall, it'll be a hurricane with cold-core characteristics, which doesn't really happen all that often. Lots of PhDs and MS in atmospheric science will be written about the evolution of this, and I'm sure several million tax dollars will be given to differing proposals concerning its development.

The entire Eastern Seaboard is certainly going to be seriously affected. Cleveland is mainly going to get really nasty wet weather. It's a good thing it's not a few degrees cooler, otherwise Cleveland and Erie would be buried in a few feet of snow, much like the mountains of WVa, Virginia, and Maryland will be. Be safe if you're in areas that will be impacted, and get out of low-lying areas.

Peeker, the modern-day weather hype machine is completely insane nowadays. I realize there have been a lot of overhyped things (read: TS Irene) but this is a bit of the real stuff. Lots of FUD permeates the actual science, but like April 27, 2011 was the serious real thing for the South concerning the tornado outbreak (I know, I was there living in it), this is a real issue in the East Coast for a fairly infrequent (once every 30-50 year) storm.

fairvis wrote:Peeker, the modern-day weather hype machine is completely insane nowadays. I realize there have been a lot of overhyped things (read: TS Irene) but this is a bit of the real stuff. Lots of FUD permeates the actual science, but like April 27, 2011 was the serious real thing for the South concerning the tornado outbreak (I know, I was there living in it), this is a real issue in the East Coast for a fairly infrequent (once every 30-50 year) storm.

I hear ya.

But I wonder if Lee cared about April 27, 2011 and the severity of the weather in the south?

I'm thinking no.

But if it happens in Boston or on the east coast THIS SHIT IS FOR REAL, YO!!!!!

Part of me hopes PA is the new east coast by Friday and Mass/NY are fertile fishing grounds

To be serious, you know it's serious when you're traveling in Central PA on a Sunday morning and all the traffic heading EB is bucket trucks, power trucks, tree trucks. The state is sending 90% of all their equipment east for this.

So yeah..I get it'll be rough.

I also agree the weather paranoia machine is outta control. And I'd go so far as to say the media driven bullshit with creating so much drama around undeserving storms will kill some people this week who figured this one was bullshit too.

peeker643 wrote:I also agree the weather paranoia machine is outta control. And I'd go so far as to say the media driven bullshit with creating so much drama around undeserving storms will kill some people this week who figured this one was bullshit too.

That's the biggest issue in public communication. Cry wolf every so often, and then when it's really bad, nobody believes you. Part of this does have to deal with the pervasive coverage of national weather events, so people will hype an event in an area that doesn't matter to them. Also, let's say you're in a tornado area. One goes 30 miles away from your house to the north, another 30 miles to the south. You hear the sirens, you take cover. But you're ticked because the storms were "nowhere near you". That's been what's happening a lot of times as well - a 30-50 mile miss in storm damage (which is really, really effing good) gets treated like the predictions were completely wrong.

One of the chilling feelings I had was driving up I-65 after the April 27, 2011 event and seeing nothing but power trucks heading south all the way through Tennessee and Kentucky. Even saw some on I-71.

peeker643 wrote:Not sure what I'll do if one of the plastic pumpkin decorations gets blown down the street.

I suppose I could take precautions but what chance does anyone have against the 340th Storm of the Century (from this century).

I do hope that somewhere out there on the ocean some dumb fucking swordfishermen are trying to decide whether to seek safety with plenty of time to do so or to make a more northern run for the big fish.

Christ- Stupidity will kill 98% of those who die in storm-related ways.

On the plus side, I do finally own a flashlight though! After the transformer fire that left half-of Boston in the dark for three days this past spring and the two mile walk I went on to find a flashlight that night, I finally own one!

I liked this storm better when my own chances for losing power and being inconvenienced were less.

Good move by those dudes on the Bounty trying to keep that ship safe by leaving late and trying to go around the biggest effing storm of the year. Ship sank with two of their people not being found and they put smarter people who had to rescue them at risk too.

That's what I mean by people being too dumb to walk the earth. You'll be able to fill a phone book with tales of idiocy from this storm alone.

We are supposed to get the brunt of it from 5:30 - midnight. I'm just fine, this isn't a big "rainfall" storm and the Back Bay was man-made in the 1800's so we are way, way, way above the flood plane. Trees falling and flooding in more natural coastal areas is about it thus far.

And we're far enough north the the storm will have a big impact, but we aren't going to get New Jersey'd.

50,000 here without power right now, all of CT without power, etc.

Power/work/etc tomorrow is my biggest concern. DC already shut down for Tuesday (actual DC, not just stupid poltical fucksticks), same with the stock exchange (first time ever closed two days in a row due to weather).

Oh and the Pub across the street is closed, so if things get real ugly I have nowhere to go.

I don't think a single access point into/out of NYC is open right now, the Chesepeake Bay Bridge (MD) closed, etc. This thing is just nuts in terms of reach.